Bill Clinton's recital of the oath of
office at noon January 20 marks more than just the opportunity
for a fresh start for the president. It also signifies the possibility
of a new beginning for the first lady.

According to the hot-off-the-presses
memoir by former presidential advisor Dick Morris, the Clintons
will spend their second term in the White House conscious of
securing their place in history. Mrs. Clinton must be thinking
that she doesn't want her second four years in the White House
to be anything like the first: marked by accusations of scandal
and criticism for proposing an unpopular health care reform plan.

If so, there is an idea Mrs. Clinton
should consider: leading a crusade in the second term to warn
Americans, particularly young adults and adolescents, about the
dangers of sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs).

The idea of a First Lady-led crusade
against STDs is not as distasteful as it first appears. A crusade
against STDs would be valuable politically for the Clinton Administration.
Unlike most ventures with which the First Lady was associated
in the first term, it is devoid of political risk. Furthermore,
because Mrs. Clinton's views on this issue offend neither conservatives
nor liberals (in interviews and in her book It Takes a Village
Mrs. Clinton has advocated abstinence for young people until
at least the age of 21 in part to avoid disease), a crusade could
help her husband be seen, as is his wish, as a political centrist.

A crusade against STDs would also be
personally satisfying for the First Lady, who has long indicated
a preference for work that helps young people. As the first baby
boomer First Lady she also no doubt would achieve some satisfaction
from adopting a topic that would have been unthinkable for the
First Lady when she was growing up. As a feminist, she would
appreciate being able to slow the spread of diseases to which
women are nearly twice as susceptible as men. And her place in
history would reap the benefit of the American people's appreciation
for her work in this sensitive but critical area, just as Betty
Ford's popularity soared when she tackled breast cancer publicly
-- a topic until then never mentioned by a President's wife.

But, most important, young Americans
would benefit greatly from her effort. Sexually-transmitted diseases,
or STDs, are an epidemic in this country. According to Dr. Bernadine
Healy, former director of the National Insitutes of Health, chlamydia,
a disease that causes miscarriage, pain and is a causative or
contributing factor in up to 75% of all cases of infertility
caused by scarred or black fallopian tubes, affected from 3-5
million Americans in 1995. That same year human papilloma virus,
or HPV, a little-known virus that causes cancers of the cervix,
vulva, penis and anus, as well as respiratory diseases in the
infants of mothers with the disease, newly infected 500,000-1
million Americans. In 1995 there were a half million new cases
of herpes simplex (which causes the death of 400-1,000 babies
born to mothers with the disease each year); 200,000-300,000
new cases of Hepatitis B (which kills about 6,000 Americans per
year ); a million new cases of gonorrhea, which causes infertility
and occasionally meningitis or endocarditis (infections of the
lining of the brain and heart, respectively); a hundred thousand
new cases of syphilis, which causes death if untreated and causes
40% of infected pregnant women to lose their babies, and a million
new cases of pelvic inflammatory disease in women, which will
lead to permanent infertility in 10-20% of them. And, of course,
there is AIDS.

Should she undertake it, Mrs. Clinton's
new effort need not be difficult. Under the welfare reform bill
passed by Congress last year and signed by the President the
Department of Health and Human Services has been allocated an
additional $50 million (for a total of budget of $87 million)
annually for sexual abstinence education. These are funds Mrs.
Clinton, in concert with her long-time friend and associate,
Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, can instantly
tap to fund public service announcements, brochures, videos and
other materials necessary to an educational campaign. Nor need
this effort be controversial: unlike Food and Drug Administrator
David Kessler's crusade against tobacco in President Clinton's
first term, in which he proposed so many new regulations of dubious
constitutionality that even many non-smokers and Clinton allies
in Congress objected, the area of sexually-transmitted disease
is not one that easily lends itself to controversial new federal
regulations.

In many ways Mrs. Clinton had a beleaguered
first term as First Lady. By adopting a educational crusade against
STDs as the focus of her second four years in the White House,
Mrs. Clinton could do a tremendous positive service for the American
people by reducing death, infertility and misery while taking
a giant step forward in securing for herself a positive place
in history.

Amy Moritz Ridenour is president of
The National Center for Public Policy Research.